A certaininfluencernamed Kaitlyn, known by her fans as “Amouranth.” She is 25 years of age, beautiful, and does her streaming and modeling on Twitch. Unfortunately, she is the apparent victim of Blackmail online.
Siragusa usesSocial Media Platforms to promote herself. A fair number of her posts on Social Media Platforms have been removed for apparently violating community guidelines. The problem is that any fair reading of the guidelines would seem to rebut the reason for their removal.
During late Spring about a dozen of Siragusa’s posts were deleted from Social Media Platforms. Siragusa began charting her deleted posts. On June 5th she received an email with a tentative reason for these deletions. The email was from a person going by the name of “Tampa.” He/She claimed to work for Cognizant. This is an internet firm with an office located in Tampa Florida that has a bad reputation for employees who are overworked and poorly paid. This firm does legitimate moderation work forinfluencersand Social Media Platforms.
Siragusa believed that “Tampa” was a fraud when he claimed that for a mere .25 bitcoin per month, about $2,600, that he/she will prevent further post removals on Social Media Platforms. She simply ignored “Tampa”, at least, until July when he/she began sending Siragusa records of timestamps for the deleted posts. Timestamps in Internet parlance refer to the specific time her posts were uploaded. This information is not easily available to the public, but it could be known to someone on the inside of Instagram or Cognizant.
After confirming, using her own records, the timestamps that “Tampa” mentioned for deleted posts, Siragusa started taking the blackmail threat seriously. She asked her agent to get in-touch with managers at these platforms, which owns Social Media Platforms. He managed to get a representative on the phone. For the most part, it is nearly impossible to get a representative on the phone for the general public.
The agent told the rep about the attempted blackmail. Unfortunately, the possibility of blackmail was not taken seriously by this rep. The representative kept insisting that all of the posts taken down must have been taken down for legitimate reasons that involve community guidelines. The call lasted 20 minutes and was recorded. Siragusa was so disappointed by the results of this call that she took her case to Huff Post. She made the recording available online so anyone could hear it, and she complained of the difficulty of getting anyone to take her legitimate complaint seriously.
Some higher-up atthe management officegavean official response to this complaint by Siragusa. He/She suggestedthey was indeed concerned about the possibility of blackmail, but no evidence that blackmail had actually taken place was found. This response also stated something to the effect that the rep that the agent had conversed with had no training on community guidelines and was not responsible to answer questions about such guidelines.
While there is still no proof that “Tampa” was an insider at any Social Media Platforms, it is still overwhelmingly suspicious that this assumed troll would have the patience to collect Siragusa’s timestamps and contact her after determining that the posts were taken down. This person seemed to know a lot about procedures at Social Media Platforms, particularly the 14-day restricted period after a post is taken down.
